What You Need To Know About Infectious Disease
Prevention & Treatment
Government Policies
Keeping our nation safe from disease outbreaks depends on effective and well-coordinated programs that monitor public health. What are some of the key efforts at work in the United States?
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What do you know about infectious disease?
True or False: Antibiotics work by introducing an agent that resembles a disease-causing microbe, thus stimulating the body's immune system to recognize it as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that it can more easily identify and destroy any similar, disease-causing microbes that it later encounters.
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Sorry, that’s incorrect.
The above describes how vaccines work. Antibiotics work by either killing bacteria or stopping them from reproducing, allowing the body's natural defenses to eliminate the pathogens.
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Correct!
The above describes how vaccines work. Antibiotics work by either killing bacteria or stopping them from reproducing, allowing the body's natural defenses to eliminate the pathogens.
Infectious Disease Defined
- Antibiotic Resistance
The process through which pathogenic microorganisms, by way of genetic mutation, develop the ability to withstand exposure to the drugs that had once been successful in eradicating them.
National Academies
Search the National Academies Press website by selecting one of these related terms.
Source Material
- Enhancing Food Safety: The Role of the Food and Drug Administration (2010)
- BioWatch and Public Health Surveillance: Evaluating Systems for the Early Detection of Biological Threats—Abbreviated Version, Summary (2009)
- Sustaining Global Surveillance and Response to Emerging Zoonotic Diseases (2009)
- The U.S. Commitment to Global Health: Recommendations for the Public and Private Sectors (2009)
- Global Infectious Disease Surveillance and Detection: Assessing the Challenges, Finding Solutions—Workshop Summary (2007)
- Addressing Foodborne Threats to Health: Policies, Practices, and Global Coordination—Workshop Summary (2006)
- Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response (2003)
